White Noise

White noise is a random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal's power spectral density has equal power in any band, at any center frequency, having a given bandwidth. White noise is considered analogous to white light which contains all frequencies.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Sitting at the Domestic Airport in Bombay waiting for my flight to take off to take me to the capital for THE monsoon wedding and realizing I haven't blogged in a while. Whattodo, we are lazy like this only? Enjoying free Wifi in India! Nandita Das is telling me to save the trees from the TV. Gulamnabi Azad is lamenting the increased number of homosexuals in India [sic?]. DK Bose's heavy guitar riffs are blasting through my headphones. This is beautiful. This is what heaven would be like if the Surrealists all went up there and partied till the Sun went down again. Does the Sun ever set in heaven, or does it ever rise?

There is an insanely crazy number of Bangalis in the Indian film industry. A jamboree of Roys and Guhas and Sens. Why the fuck am I writing this? It's painful to go on when you have nothing to say. Doping athletes - South Indian maidens with amazing legs are crying on TV. They all wear the neon blue of the Indian Cricket Team now. Not aesthetically pleasing, if you will. Fuck, I need to shave. I wish I had had the time. Not for beautification reasons. It's so fuckin hot out here that having any kind of facial hair is not an option. I hear Delhi is hotter. Can it get any hotter? I sound like an ABCD now but it's all good. With a little patience, we shall endure and persevere. I realized this the other day when I was sandwiched between two old men talking about the good ol' simple days of 60's Bombay, sweating in my black t-shirt in Saturday evening Bombay traffic. There was no space to wipe the sweat off. There was no space to even shift. But it was beautiful. We all just need a li'l patience. And that applies to the industry as well, the patience I mean.

FTII was great. Green and great, though I hear from the locals it is a green mental prison of sorts. One of those places that seduces you to stay longer than you should and wastes the best years of your life. The trick I hear is frequent work related trips to Bombay. It's only 3.5 hours by comfortable AC Volvo buses. The Western Fuckin' Ghats. Very green, very ominous, especially in the fog of elevated Maharashtra. Lots of tunnels, lots of poetry, delving into darkness and emerging from it, stronger, higher, slower.

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Sambaman is snoring in the bed next to mine, singing Anjan Duttta's Bondhu in Portugueshe in his sleep. Anjan is serenading us, alternating with Paco de Lucia between bouts of wine - a 2007 Bordeaux on a tequila sunset over the Miami skyline. The vantage point is room 1424 of the French Hotel Sofitel, where everyone wishes you bonsoir with Cuban accents as you run into the hotel lobby from the crazy high speed tornadoesque winds.

The end is nigh. Sambaman will be dead at 40 with all the four cheeses clotting up his arteries like some much anticipated rain bringing relief to dark naked skin in some forgotten Bengali delta. ArSENik's liver will give through from all the alcohol. I wonder if it will make good patte. In related news, I just learned that the lead guitarist of the Stones, can't remember his name right now, you know the Pirate one. He starts with a K, non? He did a line on his dad. When his dad died recently, he bunched up some of the ashes and snorted a neat little line. And we all know the dude redefines the lines of accepted madness every day. The bar is higher. We have to jump higher. Sergei Fuckin' Boobka.

No wonder the Sofitel is empty. The windows look like the computer screen of a weak Tetris player from the parking lot. Every five minutes or so, thunderous vibrations shake up the room. You collect your things and run and somewhere between the eighth and seventh floors down, you realize you aren't in California anymore and thus the possibility of an earthquake is more remote than getting hit by lightning. You wait for the elevator on the seventh floor, shaking in your pajamas, a Scotch nightcap in right hand. You see the tequila sunset is part of a panorama landscape that is also shared by a canvas of gradient blue across which phallic objects are launched. "An airport!", exclaims Sambaman with juvenile glee. The man spends his free time landing plans amidst snow storms in Flight Stimulator 2.0. If life was a movie, he would save the world one day by landing a plane when the pilots pass out from some exotic Amazonian gastronomical disease, and then walk out to the tarmac in slow motion as the air hostesses, or Space Waitresses (as Chuck P. would call them) pole danced around him (in slow motion) as Steven Tyler raunched up regular family-style lyrics. Enter Papa Samba, who LOVES his first born like he loves aged German wine and he brainwashes Mama Samba to convince her that Sambaman would die from flying one day (and not from the four cheeses). And who suffers? Poor little ArSENik! Sambaman is a plane freak. He goes for a drive to the airport, pays for the expensive parking every weekend and watches planes take off, describing the motion to ArSENik, who is laying it on thick on some thick bartender, not because he wants to go home with her, but because he wants free Jack. It's pure poetry, like the Dude listening to the sound of bowling championship pins going for a spin.

If you have read about our earlier exploits, you'll know we aren't your average trigger happy tourists. We try to blend into the beige of the Miami peoplescape, kinda like that NBC ad that says "We are Miami. Yay!"ArSENik has been spoken to in Cuban accented Spanish like he was Che's long lost illegitimate son with a local fisherwoman, conceived underwater while Ringo was singing about octopus' gardens above the surface. So, we don't go to Parrot Land or whatever it is called. To these two, life is but a milestone of meals - Joe's tonight, Pollo Tropical tomorrow afternoon. And they don't differentiate. The greasier the better, the fattier, even better, beer battered and ArSENik would buy the whole restaurant dinner as if it was Che's birthday. Sambaman, an adopted local of sorts from his undergrad days, tries to show ArSENik Coconut Grove and Miami Beach, but ArSENik dozes off in the uncomfortable Hyundai 2010. He says he closes his eyes to block out the over-exuberant sun that is obviously trying to impress invisible nudist bathers. Sambaman smiles that pilot Orbitz smile and tells ArSENik the reason for his narcolepsy. He informs him he has been talking in his sleep. ArSENik stiffens like a chambermaid asked to do King Louis the XXWhatevaIII's bed during the height of the French Revolution. ArSENik thinks he has spilled the beans of his dreams of Sambaman's hot sister-in-law that plagues him from time to time, where she teaches him Brazilian accented French in a Santa suit. Now this may sound fine to you, but keep in find, Christmas falls in the summer in Brazil. Now, wouldn't any self-respecting female Santa be hot in that fake beard and the red wool. The SIL keeps the fake beard, but nothing else. Let's change the subject.

We are going to Primanti's tonight. It's a local Pittsburgh joint where they put fries INSIDE the sandwich. Brilliant, isn't it? Almost as good as fake white beards! The Rabbit, slogging away at a cool job back in LA is pouting at the thought of Floridian Pittsburgh sandwiches, because the burroughs are in suburban Pittsburgh, but ArSENik reasons 'C'est la vie' (there's that accented French again!). ArSENik is supposed to wake Samba up in fifteen minutes, but the act seems unnecessary at this point because of the barrage of calls from Rio. You see, Sambaman's film is playing at the Brasilia Film Festival, as I write and as he snores next to me, and the whole of Rio wants a piece of him. The festival folks are tweeting the hell out of the film, which is great, except that the Rockstar wants to sleep. If a beautiful French woman offered herself to Sambaman while he was going to bed, he would choose the bed - alone. Don't judge him! We all have our Achille's heels. I am sure ArSENik would choose the Jack in the Frenchwoman's hand when she embraces him, and push her aside for Jack, or Jacques.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

I am a freak - a raging lunatic right now. Slept like 4 hours last night. Had to stay awake in the office. Injected myself with some double espresso Starbucks elixir (branded bullshit I know, but what the hell there was nothing else around, so don't judge me) and now I still can't sleep. It's 12:32! You must think I am working hard - slogging away like some nymphomaniac workaholic prostitute, but that's as far from the truth as Communism, man. I was up reading Advaita Kala's Almost Single.

End of para - what the fuck?, you think - ArSENik's going soft with age. I tell you, the chick can write. I mean sure it's a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of feminism, but screw all that man, you gotta be honest here. In any case, the best art form is one that convinces you of its offending POV, non? Whatever, before I get lost in space tangents, lemme just say it - I enjoyed the book. She writes like a Goddess. It's as if Saraswati and Athena were this cutesy liberal lesbian couple that had a catfight to have Odin's (too much of Gaiman off late you ask?) baby, which they brought up - that my friends is Advaita Kala. I will even go so far as to say that she can hold her own in front of the Chatterjee, yes yes, the very same, the Father of August.

I am sure I sound like a desperate stalker right now, but censorship is way overrated, so what the hell. Her writing makes me wanna seek her out and ask her out for a cup of coffee, and this despite the fact that I know she will be judging me the minute I open my mouth, actually even before that. Yes, yes I know children - good authors create characters from their vast zzzz...zzzz... I know how it works Sonny - I am a writer myself (OK fine, maybe not a big one, but I write scripts {which very few people read} and blogposts from time to time - the Magna Crata of our generation) and we writers have zero imagination, but amazing observation skills and, pay attention to this one - we are great at introspection and self-analysis and love to project ourselves onto our work (watch my thesis film).

Anyway, now that I have declared my undying love for Ms. Kala and her kala and would now be a certified loon in most societies, I have a confession to make. I am fed up. Of my last few posts - read them. They are so fucking pseudo man. I mean that's not the real me. It's some guy trying to be Fellini or Lynch or someone in between. Enough of this horse manure, let the real ArSENik stand up. This one's from the heart... Paparapapapa... Oh fuck sorry. Thought I was Tom Waitts there. If you got that and are a woman, hit me up. I would like to buy you a cup of Cappuccino.

I was depressed earlier today - you know one of those "artistic" slumps - partly because I had nothing to read, well nothing substantial anyway. I tried reading this Father Brown almanac which I had inherited through some grave misfortune from some dry, distant relative who happened to be a convalescing alcoholic. The almanac was probably the cause of the ailment. I was considering doing shots of Jack, which I haven't done in a while. And then I remembered I have some Vodka as well. Vodka and Jack = Jodka shots... but I decided against it and started throwing up here. It seems more therapeutic (not for you obviously) but for me, hell yeah bebe. Can't wait for the fucking library to open. I WANNA READ FIGHT CLUB. It's a weird fantasy, but what the hell - bite me, or rather fight me! Hahagaga. How sick is that? Laughing at your own puns and general wittiness and awesome, ness?.

Did I tell you Aaron Sorkin rocks my world these days? What's happening to me? Am I gonna quit filmmaking and become a writer? Nonsense verse, Facebook Wall Posts - you name it, I got it. If only Amazon Kindle would publish my book of Facebook Wall Posts. Can't wait till Monday. Going to Boston in this terrible cold. Why you ask? I just told you - I'm a fuckin lunatic. Maybe I am not. Maybe I have lost that feeling, that feeling of going numb from the cold. It still counts as a feeling right? Because I can't feel for anyone anymore (apart from myself of course - I am a Golden God after all). Doesn't it suck to be smart, good looking (I didn't say hot!) and have a decent body without trying? I mean you loose a frame of reference man. Fucking Communists! Ok fine, I have a receding hairline, but even that doesn't bother me no more - I hate this confidence thing. I have lost that innocence of fear from way back when.

Why am I unleashing this on to you? Because my regular involuntary confidante has been ignoring my calls, and you can't! Hahahah. Someone recently told me they didn't like Fellini because he was too self referential. This is a blog, miss (or mistah - but I doubt guys read blogs). I can do whatevah I want here - this is my sandbox, slave-girl. I mean, sure if you are reading this and getting a kick outta it, more power to ya. Blogging is psycho therapy for the poor, but of course you gotta be educated man. Oh, I got my Masters Degree in the mail yesterday. They tell me I had a 3.71 overall GPA - Hah! That matters as much as rhinoplasty does to theater actors. I miss the theater! Wish I had money to go watch plays again. My friend starred in one and I didn't go even though I wanted to, because that was like 5 decent meals, man.

Oh yeah Boston - so yeah the SS and the KK will be there to welcome me into their loving arms. Nazis with double lettered initials, you ask? No, no relax. Just a coincidence. These are upright citizens of society who actually like me (still don't know why, but they do). If I ever had to get alibis, it would be them. If I ever had to get old on a little room above a garage, it would be theirs. If I ever danced at a wedding, it would be theirs. Oh Boston and Philly. The Rabbit tells me Philly is absolutely good for nothing except for food. Being a history major, he educates me on the Liberty Bell, but what am I gonna do with a bronze ghanta? It seems like the second runner up prize at a female puberty contest. Food all the way it is - competing cheesestake places across the street - sometimes you just have to love Capitalism. And New York. I have been there many times. Done all the touristy stuff, even done the non-touristy stuff by now, but what the hell, we have a New York junkie with us. One week of bliss and cold, but hopefully more bliss than cold.

If you babble away, can you be a good writer? I don't think so. Shouldn't it be coherent and stuff? I mean mad men babble and not all writers are mad. Ergo, being mad doesn't gurantee you to be a good writer. You know what - it just hit me - just like the digital camera has been the ruin of the film industry, the laptop has been the ruin of the writing industry. Chetan Fuckin Bhagat. I love Five Pint Someone, because I used to be an Engineering geek who managed to survive The Shaft from Tech. But he can't write man. I mean he writes like an autowallah (assuming the autowallah is literate). The autowallah tells good stories, but he can't write. Why doesn't Bhagat give sermons instead - he can still tell stories rather than selling 95 Rupee books? One Night @ the Call Center is possibly the worst book I have read. The only salvaging part in the entire evil paper cuboid is when the protagonist decides to do something, and that too, its not novel.

And then there is the anti-Bhagat - Omitabo Ghosh. Writes like a Norse God on LSD, but his stories are dull and at best uninteresting for the most part. I mean seriously what was that ending with the Calcutta Chromosome, huh? Chutiya samjha hai kya? However, Hitchcock (and thus Polanski) would have been proud of one little sequence in an abandoned railway station somewhere in East Bumfuck, Bihar or whatever it was called back when the Stiff Upper Lip was still sucking us dry. Polanski IMO never a great director, good but never great, why you ask, why, ArSENik - don't be hating on the old guy, man, BECAUSE THE MAN HAS BEEN COPYING HITCHCOCK SINCE THE 60's, man. Ghost Writer - great film, but everything down to the music is a Hitchocopy. The man is like in his 70's now and he is still doing this shit. Repulsion, Knife in the Water blah blah blah. Chinatown is too slow. I like Rosemary's baby.

I was so desperate for a read, I dodged firewalls to download PDFs of Amar Chitra Kathas. While the nostalgia lasted, it was great, much like a heroin high I am told, and when it wore off, I wondered what the fuck I was doing craning my neck to read this beautifully illustrated crappily written entity in bed. So I threw it away (digitally speaking - Trash!) and am ranting on here. I hope to the FSM no one reads this. It's so fucking negative and all that - negative energy, vastu shastra, cynical, make war not love message bullshit, but I feel feucking great. I won't lie. Try it out. You feeling low - just come out and type your fingers away, man. Thousands of years of evolution and this is all we have.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Willie is tall and gaunt and likes to be alone. He is one of those guys who looks effortlessly good in thin ties and slim black pants. He wears pointed shoes and has a generally antiseptic look. Terry is tall and double chinned and bearded with that perpetual smile of satisfaction escaping from the corners of his mouth. He smokes pot, dines and wines all the time. Women don't fancy him and don't tell him their secrets, but they get high, dine and wine with him all the time. The Women secretly desire Willie, but don't trust him enough to talk to him. They speak to him, but they don't talk to him.

Willie and Terry are roommates - the yin and yang (or is it yang and yin?) of a supposedly creative space - empty at times ~ devoid of human touch, and whistling in the howling desert wind at the best of times. Maybe it is a movie studio. I am not sure. They don't pay rent. Willie stands outside in his cheap but expensive looking jacket - cold in the winter sun, working Main street. The owner sends him out sans breakfast (breakfast is a luxury, believes Terry, but that is the stuff of a different para) to lure in the Women from the cold. Terry sleep. I don't really know what else he does. Sometimes, after three or four joints, he speaks of the Great Post Modern Novel that he has written in his head - so "post modern in its antiquity that it would shame Homer", he claims as he exhales into the face of a petite young member of the Women.

Breakfast is a luxury. Two meals can sustain most humans, especially ones that lie in "bed" all day and write post modern novels in their heads. Beds are a luxury too. Terry once tried to explain to me the necessity for the absence of a bed in a space without vaulted ceilings if one had to write post modern novels in one's head all day. Willie doesn't understand this lazy line of reasoning. He just goes out there and drags Them in. He is a Magician of sorts - his hands never leave the pockets of the cheap expensive looking jacket. His lips are sealed shut. His beady eyes and arched eyebrows do all the talking and the Women stroll voluntarily in and then our Novelist rises from his ash colored covers. The Women get hungry listening to Terry and they order food. Terry would thank God for deliverable food if he wasn't an atheist. And when the Women get tired (listening to the post modern story), they go and sit next to the Owner. And they talk to him. Tell them their life stories - of abusive men and inflation.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Steely cold blue misty night. Two riders approach on dark blood-nosed horses - twins, the horses that is, not the men. The men seek locks of MacKenna's gold tresses from her hidden areas - locked away and guarded by her blond bearded man. The riders unsheathe their scrolls and ready for a duel. The creatures of the night settle in their front row thrones, chewing on the carcasses and sipping the blood of the weaker ones that fell on the way.

Mistah Owl, he Wise, hoots to commence the duel. The first rider's voice cuts through the night, but only steel can cut steel, and his soft voice only cuts through MacKenna's heart like putty - a gal raised on cliched foreplay techniques and premature orgasms. The wolves yawn at the moonless sky, the jackals frown like Italian circus clowns, the wild boars pick their filthy noses with their tails. If it were a Disney musical, the forest chorus would lull themselves to sleep amidst all this romantic 'nonsense'. Blondie just scratches his blond beard like a taxidermist in the wrong room at a PETA convention. Finally, after what seems like three lunar cycles, Rider #1 pauses a beat for breath, but it's a little too long, as Mistah Owl, he Wise, starts to hoot uncharacteristically like a roadside Romeo. The wolves start howling at the moonless sky, the jackals laugh nervously, like virgin fillies on first rides. Rider #1 is stunned into silence; MacKenna is caught red-handed with her hand up her skirt (and quickly withdraws the right hand).

The next sound is that of bullets fornicating at a shooting gallery - the pure, evil, shrill of a Tenor gone astray. It's Rider Deux reading from his frozen scroll - projecting like Shakespeare before he published. The carcass gallery quietens down and listens to the most beautiful eagle sounds if there ever were one, but this is a man - ostensibly so, he has arms and legs and a head and toes, thinks Mistah Owl, he Wise. The jackals amble over to the wolves and chase their elusive tails. The boars on the other side, are smoking from pipes fashioned from long bark trees. Blondie, raised on timid female attention and disinterested sex, is elsewhere. He is bouncing off puffy white cotton clouds on his fuel-empty red circumcised jet (more aerodynamic, they say). He takes his butcher's blond yellow hairy hand and puts it on the gearbox, he pauses, stroking it, as if it were a Cuban cigar, reveling in the pure entirely selfish pleasure and gives it a thrust, moving faster and faster, like a vulture, spreading its wings over the carcasses of other vultures. And then, just as it began, it ends, not with a whimper, or a bang, but sudden, like reindeer in headlights, and there is a beat of pure, holy silence, as the crowd takes it all in.

And then, and then, Blondie drops his pants - that's the sign! The boars regroup like a group of stoned teenagers out looking for Whitecastle and poof, thud, poof, it's done, just like that, not with a whimper or a bang, but suddenly, Rider #1 and his twin are torn to carcasses. Rider Deux smiles shyly like he's just won American Fuckin' Idol. His steed, too stoic to weep, is all glazed-eyed, staring straight at MacKenna, who has the air of someone who just bet on the wrong horse at the tracks. Deux gets bold. He jumps off his horse and goes down on one knee (the left one) and does an encore, directed solely at MacKenna and her gold hidden tresses. A couple of lines, but alas, Blondie, betrayed like Monsieur Bovary, pulls his pants up. A beat of stunned sobriety and then the boars go to town on Deux and his twin.

And so it ends, not with a whimper, or a bang like in the past, but suddenly. The wolves and jackals go back to each of their homes, the boars burp discordantly with their short tails between their stocky legs, MacKenna goes back to cliched romance and premature orgasms with Blondie and Mistah Owl, he Wise, does nothing but sighs. It's a deep sigh, as only Wise old owls can manage. It's not visual, but internal and nothing in those eyes, those stony steely eyes, that has seen countless massacres by stoned wild boars on moonless chilly nights.